Career Fields in Developer Relations

Recently I broke down what Developer relations was about via my new page (@DevRelLite — focused on helping newbies interested in Developer Relations), today we’ll focus on some of the career paths within the DevRel field

As newbies in the field, it’s always great to understand what Fields in DevRel your current skills fit into and or how to work towards your preferred field.

Some of these roles might be slightly defined in other ways across different companies but This article should help you understand these fields better and how they differ :

Developer Experience(DevEX):

Many might think this is a new field but only because it’s becoming more used by companies across. Just like you have User experience designers focused on improving the product experience for users, Dev Ex Engineers are fully focused on improving Engineering product experience for developers (both internal and external); from APIs to SDKs to documentation etc.

This role is more technical as it involves a lot of practical building and sometimes sees the Engineer being the go-to technical lead for the product, from the Dev/User perspective.

Developer Advocate (DAs):

Slightly argued in it’s similarities with the DevEx role, but this role helps advocate the devs need/feedback to the company and also plays support role to technical users of the product.

Typically be the bridge between the developers and the company, a popular context for success in DevRel, especially for this role is to “be the voice of the devs to company and the voice of the company to the dev”, but never have the latter overshadow the former as the Devs should always be priority, hence the name “ Developer Advocate”, You’re there to help them achieve success [even when it doesn’t involve using the company’s tool].

Asides being Engineers, Dev advocates wear many hats including

• technical writing (documentations, demo tutorials etc),
• public speaking,
• Content creating, etc

Learn more about Developer Advocacy from Angie Jones here

Developer Evangelist (DevEvangs) :

Not a popular name within the field and sometimes interchanged with “Technical ambassador”, this role is largely focused on amplifying the company’s developer tools to users. See them as forerunners of Dev advocates, as they help to spike interest of that tool in a user before the Advocate picks up to give them deeper insights on how to utilise the tool for success, take in feedback etc.

Very often this role definition is loosely interchanged with that of an advocate and have companies using either, The big takeaway from this role is it being largely focused on creating awareness (and possibly a community) on the developer tool(s)

(Technical) Community Manager (CMs):

Even though this has been existing before DevRel term was coined, This role follows up on the efforts of DAs / Dev Evangs and is very vital within DevRel as success largely thrives on an active community of users, and to achieve this, creating a space for devs/users of your product to directly share their feedback/issue with you and helping them connect with other users as them, is KEY.

Community managers oversee the entire running of that community platform and ensure there are effective communication channels in place for both users and the internal devrel team e.g. Advocates, DevEx etc.

This role can sometimes prove to be more demanding as it involves directly interacting with the users continuously, unlike other roles which do so intermittently.

Just like the Advocate role, the CMs also continue to be the voice of the community to the company and to thrive in this role, having

• a good people-relations skills is key eg public speaking, communication, leadership etc,
• some level of technical knowledge also gives you an edge (optional for some companies),
• there’s also the need for technical writing skills and a familiarity of using community platforms like Slack, Discord etc

(Technical) Program Manager (PGMs) :

They work directly with the Engineering team(s) to define and oversee technical program initiatives for the success of a specified developer tool/resource by the company.

Most of the times their role interfaces with that of the community managers as they need the communities for the success of their roles, within some companies, PGMs (just like Product managers) largely focus on a particular product and help build the developer initiatives around that product, in such scenarios, it’s always great to have a level of technical knowledge(optional) around that product/field to help understand program needs and drive success in it

Developer Marketing :

Still largely debated if it should be under DevRel, so far many companies have had it as an entirely different unit working with the DevRel team where needed.

This role focuses on utilising traditional marketing strategies to help build the companies developer brand, They are largely focused on developer content strategies, developer event or conference sponsorships for DAs / Dev Evangs to go speak at and work directly with the Community managers in creating developer community events and helping amplify it across platforms etc

Hopefully this article broke down each field and gave you a better understanding of each. The next article will focus on some of the unpopular roles within Developer Relations that also play a major impact to the success of Developer relations across organisations.

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